Self-Publishing & Big Five Dominate Book Market...

[Phogg]

RE: Bear Mountain Books.
I think at least putting some books in a series out in print is a good idea.
Like several other readers on this thread, I like superhero novels.

I have taken to donating paper copies (generally kickstarter rewards) of young adult superhero books in our local library.
People who see read the first books from the library are more likely to find the later ebooks.

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by Phogg

RE: Bear Mountain Books.
I think at least putting some books in a series out in print is a good idea.
Like several other readers on this thread, I like superhero novels.

I have taken to donating paper copies (generally kickstarter rewards) of young adult superhero books in our local library.
People who see read the first books from the library are more likely to find the later ebooks.

Almost all of my books are in print--the difference is that I see enough interest right now to sell them on my blog (I have a blog store where I sell my ebooks in bundled mobi/epub format--I'm seeing enough interest in print that I think I need to add print bundles, probably bundles of the series' books). I always thought print was worth doing, but two years ago I was shying away from that. For example, I didn't do a print of DragonKin or Ghost Shadow (the most recent in those two series). After this year...I went ahead and put those in print. The Sedona series was always in print because I sell the most of that series in both print and ebook.

I'm seeing more interest in audio books too (and I really don't want to do audio. It's expensive and the commissions are smaller and yada yada. But. It's starting to look more attractive.)

[shalym]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

Re: Bookbub: It's just an advertising site. All the books on there are ad supported--to the tune of several hundred dollars an ad. They do some sorting in that they avoid the most obvious bad covers.

Yes--bookbub is an advertising site, but, they do not accept just any book--I know that I've never found a book that was completely unedited on there. I also have many friends and family who get books from there regularly and they seem happy with the site. One of my friends who gets books from there was part of the group of people who would never read a self-pub book because she was convinced that they were all crap. Now she buys at least 2 books per month from bookbub.

Shari

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by shalym

Yes--bookbub is an advertising site, but, they do not accept just any book--I know that I've never found a book that was completely unedited on there. I also have many friends and family who get books from there regularly and they seem happy with the site. One of my friends who gets books from there was part of the group of people who would never read a self-pub book because she was convinced that they were all crap. Now she buys at least 2 books per month from bookbub.

Shari

I'm not knocking the site--just clarifying that they are all ad listings.

[Cinisajoy]

It is my understanding that Bookbub is very selective in who they accept. I mean just because an author applies does not mean Bookbub will accept them.
Several other advertisers are also getting pickier.

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

It is my understanding that Bookbub is very selective in who they accept. I mean just because an author applies does not mean Bookbub will accept them.
Several other advertisers are also getting pickier.

They all have rules about what they will and won't accept. Bookbub has gotten choosier, in part, because they now take advertising from the big publishers as well. They actually are also particular about indie pricing and tend to now accept only those books in the free, 99 cents, to very few at 2.99 range, with the free and 99 cents being easier to "obtain" if you are an indie looking for a slot. Like any business, they are looking to maximize their end of the deal and in some ways they "set" the market by their own practices. (This can lead to them pushing indie prices lower--because indies will go free and publishers often will not.) Again, I'm not knocking anything here, however, it is an ad site. They do some curating and were actually a great start to that practice.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

They all have rules about what they will and won't accept. Bookbub has gotten choosier, in part, because they now take advertising from the big publishers as well. They actually are also particular about indie pricing and tend to now accept only those books in the free, 99 cents, to very few at 2.99 range, with the free and 99 cents being easier to "obtain" if you are an indie looking for a slot. Like any business, they are looking to maximize their end of the deal and in some ways they "set" the market by their own practices. (This can lead to them pushing indie prices lower--because indies will go free and publishers often will not.) Again, I'm not knocking anything here, however, it is an ad site. They do some curating and were actually a great start to that practice.

They are to an extent like Amazon: their primary focus is on the readers even though their money comes from the publishers. They need to maintain credibility with their subscribers so they need their deals to be worthy in both price and content. Their livelihood is at stake.

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

They all have rules about what they will and won't accept. Bookbub has gotten choosier, in part, because they now take advertising from the big publishers as well. They actually are also particular about indie pricing and tend to now accept only those books in the free, 99 cents, to very few at 2.99 range, with the free and 99 cents being easier to "obtain" if you are an indie looking for a slot. Like any business, they are looking to maximize their end of the deal and in some ways they "set" the market by their own practices. (This can lead to them pushing indie prices lower--because indies will go free and publishers often will not.) Again, I'm not knocking anything here, however, it is an ad site. They do some curating and were actually a great start to that practice.

Bookbub fees increase according to the book's price. We're talking big increases $470 (free) vs $2350 ($2.99). At two grand they are probably finding fewer authors/pubs willing to spend so much on marketing.

I also forgot about the income from affiliate fees. Bookbub is probably pulling in over $100,000 a day. Not bad for an email service.

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by Fbone

Bookbub fees increase according to the book's price. We're talking big increases $470 (free) vs $2350 ($2.99). At two grand they are probably finding fewer authors/pubs willing to spend so much on marketing.

That's not what I'm hearing. From following author threads, the authors have actually been applying for the "paid" book slots, but are getting turned down more and more often. But they can reapply for the cheaper slots and/or free and often get those. Keep in mind, I am relying on a "self-reporting" system. And I have no horse in the race. I've never applied for any slot, free or otherwise. Bookbub got its start with indie advertising and was hugely successful. Publishers began advertising with them some time ago and also report success also A couple of the marketing gurus that work there came from trad publishing jobs from what I understand (I've participated in the Bookbub twitter Q and A twice).

Indie authors put a lot of money into advertising, although from following the threads, they are actually pulling back this year. Too many of the bargain sites can't deliver downloads or buys. The market is hugely over-saturated with newsletters and mailing lists for the freebies/bargains and when authors buy ads, they have to be very careful because for the most part they can buy 7 ads, but all 7 of those ads are reaching the exact same audience (everyone signs up to multiple sites). There's also "download" fatigue and bargain fatigue.

Recently bookbub has upped the author features/sections to allow authors to create profiles and they may someday allow a blog feed (sort of like GR allows now). They also take out ads to gain subscribers (I've seen Bookbub ads while reading google news).

[BearMountainBooks]

I should also mention that all ad sites/promo guidelines push us to do the lowest price possible (and sometimes turn down applications if they decide 2.99 is too high). I did a few ads when Under Witch Moon was in KU when it was on countdown. Some sites told me upfront they wanted free or 99 cents. I mainly did advertising at the 1.99 price point and was asked on two occasions by sites that would take 1.99 books if I could lower it to 99 cents.

My point (and I'm not even sure I'm really trying to make one) is that yes, the ad sites want to get subscribers and one way to do that is to push very cheap or free books. But I think that is a quick end-game that leads to zero for both the author and the site because if authors don't make money, they won't keep coming back to take out more ads. And if the ad sites attract those who only want free, their subscriber list becomes less valuable to authors. So some of these places have cycled themselves into a quick death spiral (mainly the new ones that have been around for a year or less). And I am not talking bookbub. They are quite savvy. The know what they are doing and are careful to balance things--but they (like Amazon) are going to go after the easiest denominator when it comes to talking authors into going free. Why wouldn't they? It's a business decision.

[Fbone]

Perhaps, bookbub is looking for larger discounts and, therefore, pushing free and 99 cents. What kind of deal is a self pub at $2.99? Even $1.99? They could be looking for higher priced trad pub books in the $8-$12 range.

Fatigue is definitely a factor. Bookbub claims for crime fiction 3940 sales from 3,200,000 emails. That's something like 0.12%.
Bookbub earned $2350 + $707 = $3057.
The author/pub earned $11,781 - $3534 - $2350 = $5897

At $1.99:
Bookbub earned $1630 + $470 = $2100
Author/pub earned $7840 - $5096 - $1630 = $1114
Bookbub earns more than the author.

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by Fbone

Perhaps, bookbub is looking for larger discounts and, therefore, pushing free and 99 cents. What kind of deal is a self pub at $2.99? Even $1.99? They could be looking for higher priced trad pub books in the $8-$12 range.

Fatigue is definitely a factor. Bookbub claims for crime fiction 3940 sales from 3,200,000 emails. That's something like 0.12%.
Bookbub earned $2350 + $707 = $3057.
The author/pub earned $11,781 - $3534 - $2350 = $5897

At $1.99:
Bookbub earned $1630 + $470 = $2100
Author/pub earned $7840 - $5096 - $1630 = $1114
Bookbub earns more than the author.

The ad sites largely earn more than the author, and bookbub is one of the BETTER ones. Most authors feel fortunate if they earn back what they spent (in the hopes of gaining new fans that will buy other books).

It's competitive and a difficult game to play.

Some of the better selling self-pub have moved to a "free" first, but then price at 4.99 or even 5.99 after that. So a 2.99 deal really isn't bad depending on the author. The odd thing about "Free" is that it pushes OTHER books by the author into a higher tier. If it works. Mileage is definitely gonna vary!

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Yep, but a number of authors go the hybrid route (some trad-pub, some self pub) as well. I don't think that there is any one route that is right for everyone.

Sure, I can see it may make sense for a trad-pub author to go self-pub because they already have a known brand and no longer need a BPH to give them visibility. But for other authors, I can see why they would choose to go trad-pub given the chance. and that's what I'm seeing in the thread I cited. Self-pubs that people highlighted as good had mostly gone trad-pub.

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by Rizla

Sure, I can see it may make sense for a trad-pub author to go self-pub because they already have a known brand and no longer need a BPH to give them visibility. But for other authors, I can see why they would choose to go trad-pub given the chance. and that's what I'm seeing in the thread I cited. Self-pubs that people highlighted as good had mostly gone trad-pub.

Definitely. You see discussions all the time on the writer groups about "giving up this series to trad" with "x books planned" while working on Y series to do self-pubbed. It's a business plan for a lot of writers. One writer actually claimed to be taking what he said was a loss in monthly income to go trad with his currently successful series to get the exposure/name behind it. He pretty much said that unless it went much better than expected with the trad route, he'd start planning another series for self-pub. Doing such helps him AND helps the publisher if he can keep two quality series going.

But not everyone tries that route either. It's a LOT of work to submit query letters, get an agent, work all the various pieces. I had an agent before I went self-pubbed and there are a lot of business tasks associated with the process. You get asked for synopsis for the series, synopsis for each book planned in the series, titles, chapters and of course, manuscripts for one or two books. You still have to do all the rest of the regular marketing like short stories and contest entries to get your name out there and show you are trying to create a brand. You probably should also be writing at least one or two series while this is going on. You don't want to try to HAVE A life at that point, because there isn't time.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by Rizla

Self-pubs that people highlighted as good had mostly gone trad-pub.

Some have gone full on trad pub, while others have gone hybrid. Keeping the ebook and often audiobook rights for themselves while farming out the pbook rights to a trad pub for a nice advance. Such as Bella Andre who got a seven figure deal for world print only rights with Harlequin on her Sullivan's series or Hugh Howey who signed a print only deal of around $500,000 for Wool with Simon & Schuster.